Kiss 200 Good Jobs Goodbye

(Excerpted from Beth Barrett story in Daily News)

Even as Los Angeles has hemorrhaged high-paying industrial jobs over the past decade, City Councilman Ed Reyes is blocking a plan that would create some 200 lucrative manufacturing positions.

Rotem Co., a subsidiary of Hyundai Automotive Group, wants to lease the Union Pacific-owned maintenance facility in Taylor Yard just east of Elysian Park to assemble high-tech rail cars under a $305 million Metrolink contract.

Rotem officials said the deal would create up to 200 jobs with annual salaries of $40,000 to $80,000 each for several years.  But company officials said that when they met with Reyes in January, the proposal was shot down because Reyes favors an unfunded community park project on the site.

"He said basically that they don't need jobs in the area and that they want to see a park developed and nothing to interfere with that," said Jack Martinson, Rotem U.S.A. vice president of business development.

Reyes' support is key because council approval is needed for operating permits for the deal, even though Union Pacific owns the land.

Reyes argues that the site near the Los Angeles River is best suited for a park, and community members already are deeply vested in the project.

"I told (Rotem) there are other priorities that have been established," Reyes said, noting he also supports efforts to lure more manufacturing.

While there is not yet money to purchase the land for the park, Reyes said, nonprofits are working to secure financing and federal funds could be available.

But the councilman's dismissal of the manufacturing opportunity has angered local economic leaders.

"In other words, screw 200 jobs just to have a park," said David Fleming, Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member and chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

"There's a lot of places you can put a park, but 200 high-paying jobs, that's something else. We're losing manufacturing-zoned land all over the place when this is the really good stuff in the economy, the nuggets of gold."

While Los Angeles has added a million residents, it has lost 50,000 jobs - forcing workers to drive farther to work even as freeways grow more jammed, Fleming said.

"We need these jobs desperately," he said. (Read complete story at www.dailynews.com )
By Beth Barrett
Daily News
March 31, 2007